The present invention relates to a system and method for accounting for personnel at a site. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for accounting for firefighting personnel at the scene of an emergency.
Nearly every fire department faces the problems of accounting for its personnel at the scene of an emergency, having an accurate and readily accessible medical history for any personnel that are injured, and knowing what is in a building before arriving on the scene and entering it.
Presently, to account for its personnel at a scene of an emergency, a fire department might require firefighters reporting to a scene to report to an incident commander who will assign the firefighter to a particular sector or subsector of the emergency site. Ideally, the incident commander will decide which sector of the scene to assign the firefighter based upon the firefighter's training and experience. However, when dealing with a number of volunteer firefighters or firefighters from other districts or departments, the incident commander may not know the level of training and experience of the reporting firefighter. As a result, firefighters may inadvertently be placed at risk of serious injury. The incident commander may expose him or herself and the fire department to a liability suit should a firefighter be injured after being assigned to a sector having a particular type of fire that the firefighter is not qualified to fight.
Additionally, an incident commander would ideally know which firefighters are assigned to each sector or subsector of the emergency site and would also know when and how long the firefighters have been located in their assigned sectors. By knowing which firefighters are assigned to which sectors, the incident commander can more effectively assign and reassign firefighters to the various sectors. Further, by knowing when and how long a firefighter has been within a particular sector, the incident commander can determine whether a particular firefighter has been in the particular sector for too long and whether the firefighter should be reassigned for temporary rehab. Additionally, the fire department or medical personnel may determine how long a particular firefighter was exposed to toxic fumes in order to determine the best course of treatment for the firefighter. Unfortunately, the only way for the fire department to keep such records would be to manually maintain a notebook including this information. Such notebooks are impractical to maintain at the scene of an emergency where there may be excessive smoke and water that could damage the notebook. Furthermore, not only does making the necessary entries into the notebook take a substantial amount of time, but the time required to subsequently look up the desired information makes the use of notebooks even more impractical.
The problems relating to firefighter accountability and record keeping on the scene have been magnified greatly in the recent past due to regulations put on fire departments by state and federal occupational safety and health administrations (OSHA). When assigning firefighters to various sectors and subsectors, an incident commander would certainly benefit by having more information regarding what potential dangers may be present in each sector and subsector in order to ensure that the firefighters assigned to the sector and subsectors are qualified to deal with these potential dangers. For example, if an incident commander knew that a particular subsector of a building contained certain hazardous materials, the incident commander could assign firefighters to this subsector who are qualified to deal with those hazardous materials.
Firefighters would additionally benefit by knowing what is in a building before arriving on the scene and entering the building. By knowing the layout and contents of a building before entering it, firefighters increase their safety and improve their ability to fight the fire. Further, it would be desirable if firefighters know where utility shut-offs are before entering a building. In order to have this information available at the scene, fire departments have had to haul volumes of documents to the scene and expend valuable time searching through these documents at the scene to locate the needed information pertaining to the building. The fire departments in some large municipalities have been known to maintain all of this documentation in the fire chief's car equipped with special air shocks to support the weight of these documents. Clearly, when dealing with a large and spreading fire, there may be no time to obtain the desired information. Additionally, the desired information frequently does not arrive at the scene before firefighters arrive at the scene and enter the building. Moreover, updating and maintaining these records is burdensome and time consuming.
In view of the inherent danger in fighting fires, the odds that a firefighter shall require medical attention are higher than usual. Therefore, it would be desirable to maintain the medical history of each firefighter at the site. However, maintaining and transporting documentation having this information presents additional burdens upon the fire department. This problem is amplified when numerous volunteers and firefighters from other districts are called to the scene of an emergency.